


Bring Your Chissling To Work Day

by chissprincess



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Crack, Gen, baby thrawn causing trouble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:02:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24889591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chissprincess/pseuds/chissprincess
Summary: Admiral Elm'alani figures that bringing her 18-month-old son Raw to work for one day can’t possibly cause any problems. She really should have known better by now.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	Bring Your Chissling To Work Day

**Author's Note:**

> A quick little work with no seriousness to it whatsoever that grew out of a conversation in a Thrawn Discord server I'm in. If you like the idea of Baby!Thrawn causing mischief, you might like this too. Enjoy!

“Ah, good morning, Admiral Elm’alani,” Captain Gyriz said. As always at in the morning, he was on the bridge with his datapad in one hand and comm in the other, waiting to report to his Admiral when she arrived. But today was a little different. Today was the Ascendancy’s first ever experiment with an event they were calling “Bring Your Chissling To Work Day.” The Captain had assumed this did not apply to warships. 

And yet, here was the Admiral, carting a small, wide-eyed Chiss toddler in her arms. 

“And who might this be?” he asked, leaning just a bit closer to the child and waving. The tiny Chiss blinked, and narrowed his wide eyes. For a moment, the Captain felt as if the youngster had just stared into his entire soul and found it lacking somehow.

Admiral Elm’alani grinned just the tiniest bit. “Oh, this is my younger son, Raw. You’ve met Ras, my oldest, but he had to stay in school today I’m afraid. He has a few major exams today and couldn’t miss them.”

“Ah, I see. Um. Well, if you are able, I do have morning reports for you…”

“Of course. Come with me to the conference room, I need to give him something to do or he WILL get into mischief.”

The two adult Chiss made their way to the large war table in the conference room just off the bridge. Elm’alani set Raw down on it and dug a few important items out of the large bag she had slung over her shoulder – a sippy cup full of meiloorun juice, a bag of multi-colored Smiling Purgill crackers, a thick stack of paper, a toy datapad, and a box of brand-new crayons. She made quick work of opening the bag of crackers and the box of crayons and turning the toy datapad on. “There, that should occupy him for…” _about five minutes_. “Well, long enough for you to give me your report anyway. Please continue…”

With the adults occupied and not really paying any attention to him, tiny Raw blinked down at his options. There was the toy datapad – far too dull. He had long since exhausted all of the activities on it. He gave it a few lackluster pokes before turning his attention to the paper and crayons. Yes, he supposed he COULD draw, but he wasn’t really in a creative mood. Besides, the crayons were fresh and so pretty. They deserved to be broken in only on a worthy project. He sipped at his juice and nibbled a few of his crackers, then spied a large, glowing button not too far from him on the table. Raw glanced at the adults. They were engrossed in their conversation, and whatever they were talking about must have been deeply interesting. They weren’t even looking in his direction. The gall. Well, time to see what the button would do.

He crawled over and pushed the button, which stopped glowing, but that was okay. The table itself lit up now, displaying all kinds of shiny and colorful shapes moving across a vast display. His mother had shown him one of these once. He thought she had called it a “map.” Raw reached out to grab one of the shapes, but his pudgy little hand went right through it. He frowned. How odd. That wouldn’t do at all. Even Raw was not smart enough to play with an object he couldn’t touch. A further investigation of the area around the formerly-glowing button revealed more buttons, now pulsing with faint glows of their own. One was red, and he liked that color, so he pushed it. The items on the “map” took on a much stronger and less see-through appearance now. When he reached out to touch them, his hand still went through them, but…they also moved in response to his touch. …Yes, that would do just fine. He reached for one large, oblong object in green and another similarly-shaped one in blue, and moved them next to each other. He patted them when they were where he wanted them. Good little shapes. That looked much better.

*** *** ***

On the _Shadowstrike_ , Commander Kottoh squinted at the new command floating across his display. “This…cannot be,” he said. “Why in the names of the living and dead Aristocras would Admiral Elm’alani want us to move _there_ and fire on the _Flame_?” he asked nobody in particular. Around him, his officers faltered in their duties and glanced over at him. But it was an utterly ridiculous order. The _Shadowstrike_ was on loan to the CEDF from the household phalanx of House Nuruodo, and the Flame was similarly on loan from Nuruodo’s rival house Kana. Kana was falling out of favor and would love to take any opportunity to get back at Nuruodo for what they saw as a lack of support, but…why would the Admiral be inserting herself into cross-House affairs like this? It made no sense.

“What should we do, sir?” a Lieutenant finally asked.

“…Move within range of the _Flame_ but do not fire. Someone get me Admiral Elm’alani on the comm. I want to double-check these orders. …Perhaps it’s a wargame and we’re supposed to be using powered-down weapons, but somebody failed to relay that portion of the order.”

“Yes, sir,” his communications officer called. But then, moments later, “Sir, we’re unable to hail the Admiral or her ship.”

“Sir!” came a third frantic voice. “The _Flame_ is moving to intercept and powering up weapons!”

The Commander looked up at his viewports. Sure enough, the blasted thing was moving into view, and not only was the ship powering up weapons, but her bay doors were opening too. Inside, he could see the ranks of clawcraft just waiting to be released.

“ _SHIELDS UP AT FULL POWER!!!_ ” he shrieked. “And get me ANYBODY on ANY SHIP that might be able to help!”

*** *** ***

Raw had reorganized all of the shapes nearby into pleasing patterns, and he now sat back to admire his handiwork. Yes, that was a much more pleasant arrangement. The way the shapes were arranged now made sense. He wasn’t sure why there was suddenly a shower of tiny red blips around so many of his pairings and groupings, but it just added interest to the arrangement, so he didn’t care. Nice tiny red blips. 

Raw grabbed his sippy cup for more juice while he pondered his next activity. Maybe he should just go to another section of the map. The rest of the map looked awful. And look, now some of the shapes were moving all on their own. How dare they. They were going to ruin his perfectly good arrangement. Raw huffed and tossed his sippy cup aside and began the process of moving things back where he wanted them, and putting new things where he wanted them too. But they kept moving. Why wouldn’t they just stay put now? How frustrating. 

…Perhaps this was actually a game, and part of the challenge was to keep things organized despite the chaos of constant movement. Yes. He could do that. He had played many such games with his brother. Though, he was beginning to suspect that his brother gave him a dud controller when they played together. Lately it seemed like his choices in the games made no difference. He would have to have words with Ras about that.

As soon as he figured out how to make more words beyond “Mama, “Dada,” “Ra,” and “Up” anyway.

*** *** ***

On the bridge of the _Blackspear_ , chaos reigned. New orders were coming in every few minutes, and always just minor course adjustments. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. First they were ordered to intercept the _Voidbringer_ and fire on her. But then it seemed they were to come alongside _Voidbringer_ and fire on _Copero’s Pride_ instead, which would probably have the immediate and deadly effect of bringing all of House Mitth’s ships down on them all. But then again it looked like the rest of Mitth’s vessels were busy themselves, with half of them trying to fend off surprise attacks from House Chaf while the other half scurried this way and that, as though they were wooden toys being tugged along by a toddler pulling their strings. 

_Blackspear’s_ Captain found herself wondering what the Admiral could possibly be doing to have all of these contradictory orders going out. Was she using her war table for gymnastics or something? 

“Ma’am both the _Flame_ and the _Shadowstrike_ are calling for help, and we haven’t been able to raise the Admiral at all, what should we do?” her aide asked.

“…Stand down. Something isn’t right. Until we know what’s really happening, we should stay out of it. …And send a message to that effect to the other ships. I know half of them outrank us, but perhaps we can encourage cooler heads to prevail.”

*** *** ***

Raw sighed and watched as the colorful shapes continued to move and refused to stay where he put them. This game was getting boring. He wanted to do something else. He turned his attention to the panel of buttons once more and began poking them. The display in front of him changed several times, the last change of which brought up a pretty picture of stars and…wow, were those ships? They looked just like his toys at home! But they were floating all by themselves here! Wow. Look at that. So shiny. He settled in to watch, but in the process he accidentally hit one more button –

\-- the nearly-silent room suddenly burst into sound. Alarms blared, and voices (far too many to be processed) were shouting right in his poor little ears. Raw had not been expecting any noise at all, and this was far too much. Almost immediately, his own distressed wails and sobs were added to the din.

It was the sudden onslaught of noise that finally got Thelma’s attention, and she and her Captain both whirled back around to see what was happening. Much to Thelma’s horror, there was little Raw, sitting FAR from where she had set him…with the table’s display turned on…and showing the cause of the sudden noise. The ships under her command were _attacking each other_ , but how, and WHY? 

She scooped Raw up from his spot at the board…the board…oh no. No no no. She quickly keyed back to the view that allowed her to send commands merely by touching the blips that represented each capital ship and keyed up the list of most recent commands….oh no. No no no. “Raw. What…how did you…okay, you know, never mind, I need to stop a war apparently, hang on.”

She set Raw on the floor this time and snapped, “Watch him!” at her Captain before getting to work.

*** *** ***

In the end, everything turned out okay. But barely. Houses Kana and Nuruodo just barely avoided an all-out war, mostly thanks to intervention from House Inrokini. Chaf was about ready to just go after everyone, since it turned out that many Chaf-associated ships had nearly gotten caught in the crossfire of other little tiffs. Houses Mitth and Chaf seemed on the verge of a truce, since their leaders had decided that they should probably have a nice long chat in the wake of this terrible misunderstanding. And _Blackspear’s_ Captain finally got a promotion, thanks to her decision to sit things out and see what happened rather than jumping right into the fray.

There was one other bit of fallout though. While Raw napped on the couch in her private office, Thelma had to take a call from High Command. Fortunately, she would keep her rank this time. But…

“Admiral,” their highest-ranking General said, his voice a low rumble even through the distortion of the comm unit, “you are officially banned from ever bringing your son Raw onto your ship for Bring Your Chissling To Work Day ever again. He’s a fine young boy but I think I speak for literally everyone in the CEDF when I say that I never want to see him on a ship again until and unless he is grown and following in your footsteps, is that clear?”

“Yes, sir, of course. Thank you.” As she signed off, she twirled her seat around to watch the sleeping toddler. “…You have NO IDEA how much chaos you caused today, do you? Ah, it’s alright. Nothing truly bad came of it. …But maybe I should look into a holochess board for you.”

*** *** ***

15 years later…

The officers had gathered for their annual lunch on the anniversary of what they called They Day The Ascendancy Was Almost Bested By A Toddler. Yes, it was a long and clunky name, but that just added to the ridiculousness of the whole scenario. Fifteen years ago today, they had almost succumbed to the “orders” generated by a retired Admiral’s young toddler son playing with her war table. Sure, it had almost been a tragedy, but it hadn’t been, so they could laugh about the absurdity now.

A young Chiss none of them recognized approached the table to give the _Shadowstrike’s_ commander a datapad, then turned sharply on his heel and left. Admiral Kottoh squinted after him. “Huh. Who was that? Looked kind of familiar…”

Commodore Gyriz set his menu down. “Oh, that’s Elm’alani’s boy. All grown up and part of the CEDF now.”

Kottoh nodded. “Ah yes, I heard they were both taken in by House Mitth, just like she was. What’s he called these days? Mitth’ras’safis?”

Gyriz shook his head. “That’s the older one. This is the younger one, Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”

“…The younger one?” Kottoh repeated.

“The younger one,” Gyriz confirmed.

The table full of officers fell silent and exchanged concerned looks. One by one, they pulled their comms from their pockets. One by one, they keyed in the code to call the CEDF’s personnel division.

One by one, they all suddenly remembered that they needed to retire immediately.


End file.
